Re: MAgic 101: soft vs hard media

[jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu (Jeffrey C. Burka)]

Jorn writes:

>I'm listening to a Mary Coughlan cassette that was very dear to me during 
>a painful time last year, that I haven't hardly listened to since, and I 
>can *sense* that suffering soul, my old self, imprinted on that tape, in 
>a way I'm sure I never will on a CD.  *Spatially*, I feel it as retained 
>on that plastic film, in the soft magnetic oxides, so that all my senses 
>can focus there-- it has an *individuality* that includes an image-of-me-
>who-listened-affectionately.

I'm not attacking your theory, Jorn, but I want to point out that
you're missing one obvious possibility:  that your inability to experience,
to *sense* those feelings from a CD is a shortcoming of your own and not
of the CD media.

There's a *lot* of music out there which I have strong emotional ties
to (a lot of which happens to be by KaTe)--music which is related
to specific times and events in my life.  And those emotions and 
feelings and memories come flooding back no matter whether I'm listening
to the song on tape or CD.  It can be in my car or it can be lying in
a dark room wearing 'phones.  Walking down the street with my 
walkman listening to Happy Rhodes, pacing the shoreline with "The Ninth
Wave" playing on my discman.  There's not telling when a particular
piece of music will cause those connections to take effect; sometimes
I just hear the music with none of the prior associations leaping to the
front of my brain, making me shiver from the memories.  

I pulled out Genesis' _Duke_ today, for no particular reason at all,
and started listening to it on my discman/'phones whilst reading net.news.
And during "Heathaze" I suddenly remembered what it was like, almost 7 years 
ago, when I first paid attention to that song, and the profound effect it
and the rest of the album had on me.  I was going through a lot of 
changes then--"A stranger in an alien land"-- and I printed out the lyrics
and hung them on the wall behind my computer.  

I will say that any "imprinting," such as it is, is largely based
on musical context.  I feel fairly confident in saying that if I heard
"Heathaze" on the radio (yeah, right, like any station would play it), 
it would have very little meaning to me other than "Oh, cool, they're
playing an obscure Genesis tune!"  It's much the same with those compilations
we make when we're lonely or depressed or just a bit bored with a few 
thoughts on songs that might sound neat together.  They take on a life
of their own, and those combinations of songs develop their own
emotional baggage completely seperate from any baggage associated with
with the songs on their source album.  

I'm curious about a couple of things.  First off, why do you assume
that the "imprinting" such as it is is with the actual recording medium
and not with the music itself?  That is, if I snuck into your apartment,
unscrewed your Mary Coughlan cassette case and replaced the actual
magnetic tape with another tape of Mary Coughlan, _would you be able
to tell_?  Are your certain you wouldn't experience that feeling, that
emotion you associate with the tape now?

Secondly, are you sure you've given CDs a fair shake?  For most of my
music-buying life, I've bought CDs.  I'll have had my first CD for
a decade in October.  I've got plenty of CDs that I react to in ways
similar to what you describe with respect to your Mary Coughlan tape.
And I've got plenty of tapes I react to the same way.  


>I think what's wrong with CDs as a recording medium is that, being 
>digital, they're unable to *absorb any imprint* from you 

What on earth does the fact of digital recording have to do with this?
You're almost implying that there's something natural, organic about analog 
magnetic pulses recorded on a synthetic plastic film coated with particles
capable of retaining a specific magnetic field.

Vinyl, I'll grant, is at least vaguely natural; you could theoretically play
a record with a cactus needle attached to a paper cone for a bit of 
amplification.
 
You seem to try to argue that the recording on the medium is actually 
changed by the vibes you put out while it's playing--you mention the
idea of "re-etching" and that the recording of the music is changed
(as opposed to the imprint being with the basic physical object).  How
is my play-only walkman any more likely to re-record-with-emotiona-imprint
on my tape than my discman?

Jeff
(whose on feeling on the matter is that it's all a question of mental
associations and pathways which may or may not be set into play by any
particular circumstance in which your hear the music in question)
-- 
|Jeffrey C. Burka        | "Fairies are the perfect people to do this        |
|SAFH Lite [tm]          |  sort of work.  Biologically, their upper         |
|jeffy@syrinx.umd.edu    |  bodies are strong enough to wield a pickaxe...." |